


Secret, Knotted Shame

by Anonymous



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: F/M, giftfic, wishkisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-05
Updated: 2009-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nowhere are we safe.<br/>Surely not in love,<br/>Morning ripe at three,<br/>Or in the Holy Trinity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret, Knotted Shame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geekmama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekmama/gifts).



> For [geekmama](http://geek_mama _2.livejournal.com)'s request of "Will/Elizabeth" at [wishkisses](http://community.livejournal.com/wishkisses). Poem quoted is Owen Dodson's "Hymn Written After Jeremiah Preached to Me in a Dream."

> Nowhere are we safe.  
> Surely not in love,  
> Morning ripe at three,  
> Or in the Holy Trinity.

Elizabeth could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, the blackness behind her lids transformed into the drifting, bitter smoke of the cannons and she jerked upright with a stifled shriek burning her throat.

Even after the longboat had plunged into the darkness of the river's mouth from the silver skin of the sea, she could not believe that they had escaped. She did not want to. If they had escaped, and Jack had not, then she had condemned him to death as surely as she had condemned James for condemning Jack, all those months ago. It was a thought that made her head swim.

To be certain had always seemed so much easier on dry land. But now, it was an impossible task.

Tia Dalma's hut had seemed, in Will's hurried explanation, to be a witch's hut out of legend; now, to her fearful eyes, it was a labyrinth of horrors from the nightmares of a dying man.

Will had barely touched her as she stepped onto the rotting, slippery dock. He watched her with eyes almost fever-bright. His hands hovered by the hilt of his sword, but not, she thought, to protect her.

The darkness of the night was no concealment against the flares of her memory, and the sweet scent of the closed blooms hanging nearby nauseated her. Her skin ached, felt too full of blood and guilt, and she could not escape the ghostly caresses of men who had loved her. Or thought they had.

> (My God, look after me.)

He had always thought that he would be the one to bring Elizabeth into danger; that she would plunge eagerly after him and he would be the one to rescue her. He was no longer so certain.

And what was he to do, if he were not able to care for her? Who would — and then, the horrifying thought followed hard upon, that Elizabeth was looking after him.

> Where does Grace abide,  
> Whole, whole in surety?  
> Or does sin abide  
> Where virtue tries, in shame, to hide?  
> 

She turned away from the railing that wrapped around the house and stumbled indoors, where the monkey chittered. Her grimace of distaste provoked Tia Dalma's drowsy glare, and she clambered down the ladder that led up from the ground.

There was no more peace there.

Will was lying, if not sleeping, in the longboat, and she took a hesitant step toward him, and then her throat seized with grief. She had no claim on Will, had relinquished it, had thrown it away and drowned it like a helpless kitten (like a man chained to a sinking ship's mast), and she would not force him to love a woman who had betrayed him.

She could act with honor in that, at least. Will deserved no less.

She turned stubbornly away from Will's still form, ignoring the dark shadows under his eyes and the way his hands twitched in dreams, and faced the blackness of the river forest. There were creatures moving within the trees and low-hanging vines, she realized, creatures hunting and killing and calling out, and she flinched away from the panic that dripped down her spine like rotten perfume.

There was no sanctuary anywhere, and she felt herself begin to crack, begin to shatter, as though she were one of the china Dresden shepherdesses on the mantel-piece in her father's house. No sanctuary and no forgiveness, and no matter how little she deserved either, she had hoped for one or the other.

To be denied both was a cruelty not wholly unexpected.  


> (My God, have I no pride?)

He did not know what to think of the idea that Elizabeth might be braver than he. Might be more able to protect him than he was her, might be a worthier opponent than he. It was disquieting, not least because of the relief it provoked.

Who was he if not her protector, her lover?

> Shall I try the whole,  
> Crippled in my will,  
> Spatter where it falls  
> My carnal-fire waterfalls?  
> 

She looked upriver, towards the source of the sluggish, brackish, blackish water, where the mist seeped out of the mountains, and drew in her breath. She could not, would not, seek Jack Sparrow out; Jack could offer her no absolution, she knew that, he was not a man to forgive easily, or at all. He had hunted Barbossa for a full decade, and perhaps it made her a coward that she did not even wish to apologize, but then, so be it.

A coward would live longer, wouldn't she?

The mud was reluctant to let go of her shoes and made a mockery of her attempts to move silently. She balanced on top of stones when she could, jumping as lightly as possible from one dry spot to another, the stench of rotting fish ever-present. The water glimmered in the darkness; she thought of flinging herself in, letting it take her, sinking beneath the surface, plunging to the stinking bottom. That would be the act of a coward, and she suppressed a shudder at the thought of it, at the realization that she had sent Jack not to crushing darkness nor flailing, sticky tentacles, but to stillness.

She kept moving, her face resolutely turned away from where Will lay, the sick feeling below her ribs unspooling the further away from him she went, until her whole belly throbbed with it. Her thighs ached from clenching herself to balance, and she could feel her heartbeat echo in her throat and breasts.

Somewhere, she could hear water dripping. She did not think it was her tears.

> (My angel, in compassion, calls.)

He did not think that he had slept, that he could sleep, but nevertheless, he dreamed. Dreamed of Elizabeth with a sword in her hand, her hair aflame with the light of the rising sun, and some formless enemy looming up over her. She looked at him, and, impossibly, smiled.

"Don't worry," she said. "I would do anything for you." And then she turned away from him and threw herself forward, shouting something he couldn't understand.

> Secret, knotted shame  
> Rips me like a curse.  
> Unction in my dust  
> Gives me final thrust.

Jack hadn't said anything before she had fled him, as she was now fleeing from Will's silent accusations — she had finally stilled his restless tongue, but could not help imagining what he would have said if she had given him the opportunity to accuse her. Jack's voice had always been silk, persuasive, seductive, delicate, but it was a silken rope tangled round her entrails, and she pressed a hand to her lower belly, biting back a whimper.

The pain was not physical, perhaps (certainly), but no less real. Anything she could think that he might have said, shouted, whispered, no matter how little, ripped like a blade through her heart.

_why I know yes go go go how could you pirate only had to why so proud of you_

The voice pounding in her head distracted her so that when a stone shifted under her foot, she fell, hard, smashing her knee against a tree-root, catching herself on her palms.

> (My God, consider dust!)

Elizabeth's shout roused him, and he gasped, sitting up, his gaze going unerringly to where she knelt in the mud. He reached out a hand although she was more than a dozen yards away, her back to him, and then shook his head. Hadn't she been up in the witch's hut?

It was no matter, she was here now, and covered in filth (dust to dust, ashes to ashes), and he went to her aid, as he always had, as he always would, until she told him not to, until she spurned him fully.

His hand on her shoulder made her gasp in startlement, and she turned her face up to his, as if she no longer knew his features. Rather than pull her up, he dropped to her level, holding back a groan as his knees protested the gesture, and leaned in so that his mouth was next to her cheek. She made a sound that he could not translate into words — when had he lost the ability to understand the woman he loved? — and turned to him, her skin still as warm as though it were noon, as if she were flushing in shame, or arousal.

The brush of their lips was brief and chaste, and neither of them could look the other in the eye, but it was more than Will had hoped for. He could not have said if he drew Elizabeth to her feet, or if she supported his weight, but regardless, they were standing in the muck, leaning on each other, as dawn broke.


End file.
